


Bit by Bit (I'm Gonna Make My Bricks, Out in the Sticks)

by Captain_Cap



Category: Moominvalley (Cartoon 2019), Mumintroll | Moomins Series - Tove Jansson, 楽しいムーミン一家 | Moomin (Anime 1990)
Genre: "moomee!", (don't worry it's only weed), An attempt at humor at least, Discussions of discussions of sex, Discussions of sex, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff, Gen, Heavy usage of Headcanons, Humor, Idiots in Love, It gets kinda heavy but not too much, Joxaren | The Joxter is Not a Bad Dad, M/M, Mentions of Sex, Mutual Pining, Not Beta Read, Philosophical themes, Rated T for language, Recreational Drug Use, Snusmumriken | Snufkin Has Paws and a Tail, Snusmumriken | Snufkin is Trans, Snusmumriken | Snufkin is a Cat, That Trope Where Everybody Thinks Two People Are Together But They Aren’t (Yet), The Fuck Word is Said, are snufkin and moomintroll a pair of useless morosexuals? yes, but that’s not really important to the story, just to my heart
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2020-03-20 17:39:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18997369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captain_Cap/pseuds/Captain_Cap
Summary: Moominpappa had resigned himself to knowing that the Joxter wouldn’t return to Moominvalley, even if ithadtaken him longer than even the Mymble to stop showing up by the small bridge every summer morning. Moominmamma had given birth to their son, tiny Moomintroll, the same year the Joxter had disappeared with nary a trace.Narya trace. Notwithout a trace.For even if the Mymble did adamantly refuse to name the fathers of any of her children, it was quite obvious as to who the father of the clearly half-mumrik,only-childthat she delivered in the following spring was.OR,Snufkin doesn't really have any parents-- at least not since he was little. This is fine.OR,This isn't fine anymore.(Title fromBit by Bitby Mother Mother!)





	1. no, I won't bring too much of anything (maybe a little slicker, for the rain)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, to those of you who clicked! I haven't written anything for Moomins before, and I wasn't really expecting to— making a long story short, this first part was written after weeks of contemplation and one late night of biting the bullet. The next morning, I realised that what I did have (Chapter 1) ended pretty abruptly, so everything afterward was written separately and is mostly an excuse to practice characterizing everyone's favorite Crime Gays™. 
> 
> Anyways! I hope you enjoy :^)
> 
> EDIT: Chapter 1 resubmitted because Ao3 ate the original formatting
> 
> EDIT 2: Title changed; chapters reformatted for accessibility

   The Joxter rarely came to visit Moominvalley, these days.

 

   It wasn’t that he didn’t love the place, or that some horrible memory kept him at bay, or any somesuch nonsense— 

   It’s just… He was _the Joxter_. The cool and mysterious ladies’ mumrik, breaker of rules and terror to all park keepers. 

   He’d had fun adventuring with Moomin and the Muddler and all the rest, and he cared for them dearly, but... It just wasn’t in his nature to _stay_. 

   Moomin—Moominpappa now, because of course the troll had already gotten _married with a child on the way_ —could always get him to spend at least a night at the big old Moominhouse, with some jovial exclamation like, _Mamma just made pancakes, friend! You must try some, yes? See, this one’s blueberry—_

   And the Mymble could always convince him to stay around and look after her brood, holding him over her head and laughing as 48 little hands batted for his tail and ran off with his hat— 

   Which was just the problem! How could he _not_ be a vagabond when his friends told him over tea just how _happy_ they were without him around (well, they didn’t say it quite outright, but the Joxter allowed himself to sulk that they were so much _happier_ with each other in their stupid sedentary, adventure-less lifestyle)? Or when his dear, sweet Mymble, always expected him to _just stay a moment longer, love?_ — 

   So he left, for his own sake, because if he stayed his heart would split in two from the intimate knowledge of how he would just mess up the whole nice thing he had going for him in the Valley if he stayed. He left, because sooner or later the Mymble would realize how awful of a person he was, or tire of him, or love him for as long as he loved her and that would be the _worst outcome because he didn’t deserve it—_

   So he stayed away.

   And he came back.

   

   And he stayed away,

 

 

   And he came back— 

  And then, one fine Summer morning, he stopped coming back, because he didn’t trust himself not to supremely fuck up everything he breathed upon. Even though the thought of the Mymble and Moominpappa and, really, everyone he'd ever gotten attached to’s sad faces was enough to break his heart all over again, he kept staying away because he was _the Joxter_.

   Joxters didn’t get _attached._ Joxters swindled, joxters cheated, and joxters knew when to cut their losses and make tracks. 

   Joxters ripped signs out of grass trimmed too short to even be _proper grass_ , and joxters ignored all the little raggedy snufkins to come their way because a Joxter lives _alone, and a joxter doesn’t care for bastards and orphans in their thin patch-coats as they shiver and drip rainwater onto his tent floor, mewling pitifully as their bony legs knock together even by his cookfire—_

   No, a joxter cares for no one but himself, and he moves as he pleases and breaks every law that doesn’t suit him. _The_ Joxter is no exception, because he could not be remarkable enough to be the one joxter who acts so un-joxterlike as to insist that one’s true love can be more than his own needs.

 

* * *

 

   Moominpappa had resigned himself to knowing that the Joxter wouldn’t return to Moominvalley, even if it _had_ taken him longer than even the Mymble to stop showing up by the small bridge every summer morning. Moominmamma had given birth to their son, tiny Moomintroll, the same year the Joxter had disappeared with nary a trace. 

 

    _Nary_ a trace. Not _without a trace_.

    For even if the Mymble did adamantly refuse to name the fathers of _any_ of her children, it was quite obvious as to who the father of the clearly half-mumrik, _only-child_ that she delivered in the following spring was. The kit was unique among the rest of his siblings— the little curls on his head were brown as a sparrow’s wing, not ginger, and his little claws were fiercer than even the Joxter’s had been. 

  She’d said that _no, Moomin, he doesn’t know,_ so Pappa kept that secret just as she’d asked him to, and kept it close to his heart (which he’d open to really, anyone who’d buy him a shot or two). 

   But the Joxter didn’t return to the Valley, so, really, Pappa didn’t know why he’d had to have kept the “secret” in the first place. Was it not obvious enough where the little snufkin had come from? Of course, the Mymble would cut his tail off if she knew he’d been calling her youngest a snufkin, even if he _was_ one. Nobody dared call _one_ of The Mymble’s Brood a snufkin (or a snusmin, which was the lesser-known feminine version), because then the whole _lot_ would be snufkins (and snusmins), too, and the Mymble fiercely insisted she was always the only parent the children would ever have, or need.

   Pappa reluctantly agreed with her, at least because he had no clue on the raising of a young mymble, and also because surely she was doing something right if she only lost one child every year or so.

 

* * *

 

_“Och! Out with ya’, damned snufkin! Don’t let me see your sorry hide ‘round here or I’ll tan it!”_

 

_“Oi, where’re your parents? I h’a’int seen anyun wit’ the balls ‘nuff to bring a snufkin here in ages.”_

 

   They kept calling him that. Was that his name? How did they learn it? How had he not?

   To the best of his memory he used to be called “Another Of The Mymble’s,” or “The Mymble’s Youngest, Poor Thing It Is.” Not “Snufkin.” 

   Well, there was that time the ancient Police Inspector called him “That Joxter’s Damned Snufkin,” which was close enough. A nickname, then, maybe?

   It was always hard to deal with these many people who called him by his apparent name because they never seemed happy to see him. He did not understand this one bit— why learn his name if they didn’t like him? His Mamma had never learned the names of the children she didn’t like! It was so silly of all the trolls and beasts who called his name, because they didn’t even bother to let him in so he could eat dinner and share it with twenty-four other little Mymbles like him.

_“He don’t look like a mymble to me, I think. More like a dirty snufkin brat, jah, boys?”_

They just shouted and called him mean names and spat out _his_ name as if it was another of the mean names, which made his tummy feel twisted in the not-fun way that made him want to curl up small and _hide_. 

   He’d never really owned anything, partly because it was usually stolen as soon as acquired because the bigger street-kids never have to buy anything themselves if they know who to beat up. 

   He never really liked having much, anyways. He could just sleep in trees, safe in the leaves, and tickle fish from nearby streams. All he ever kept were the clothes on his back, as well as a hat three sizes too big that was such a lovely green as to match the leaves of the nice trees that kept him safe at night. It sported a full, bright red cardinal feather pinned to the hatband, and Snufkin loved it immensely. The other urchins thought he was older when they couldn’t see his face under the wide brim. 

 

* * *

 

   Snufkin had messed up, again. His wandering feet had lead him to a mostly-hemulin town, complete with gas-lamps and cobblestone streets and fancy hemulinladies with big hats. As was custom for hemulin towns with gas-lamps and cobblestone streets and fancy hemulinladies with big hats, there was a clearly marked toll booth outside its walls that closely regulated all flow through said town. This would’ve been fine, had Snufkin any possessions of his own, but being the free spirit he was, he had none. Thus he was found in a rather tricky spot where he couldn’t quite afford to pay the town’s “entrance toll,” much less its “exit toll.” None of the other street rats had told him there was a toll in the first place! Just getting into the place sucked his wallet of the meager earnings he’d gathered over _months_ of odd jobs.

   So he was, for the moment, stuck. He hated it.

  As he grew, the thicker the fur around his arms and legs grew, too— he was quite proud of it, as it made him look more like an adult under his coat and hat. Unfortunately, all the adult looks in the world couldn’t will him money from nowhere. No one seemed particularly willing to hire an orphan off the streets, in any case. _And that was fine by him, honestly, not like he_ wanted _to work for some stuck-up shopkeep just so he could eat or maybe_ leave _the infernal place._

  His coat had been repaired so frequently that it was more quilt than garment, and it had become so short from his growing that it barely touched his knees, as opposed to the ankle-length it had once boasted. One _glance_ at him and any passerby would instantly be able to find out that he was another of the abandoned bastard children that somehow hadn’t died living on their own. _Yet._  

   Snufkin was still too small for his age to pretend that he was just another full-blooded mymble child waiting for Mamma to return for him. He couldn’t quite pretend to be a particularly large mumrik kit, either, because his ears were the wrong shape for that and his eyes didn’t _quite_ look like a mumrik’s should. 

   He couldn’t even feel sheltered with his beloved trees— a hemulin park-keeper had moved into the town, declared the forest private property, and then outlawed the residence of any vagabonds and tramps in the “park.” Snufkin hadn’t brought enough money with him to “visit with nature,” for he hadn’t known that hemulins prioritized profit so much; all of his savings after the ridiculous toll  afforded him the night at one hotel before he got kicked out for not having enough to pay the full bill. 

    He had quite literally been thrown into the gutter, and rose from it sopping wet and chilled to the bone. He hadn’t the resources to leave the town, but he couldn’t _stay_. Ominous gray clouds were stacking in the sky as far as he could see. If he stayed out, he’d get drenched. His hat, which at this point in his life was now only two sizes too big, had almost floated away for good in the gutter-water’s pull, and Snufkin despaired when he realized that the once-glossy red feather under the hatband had fallen out and gone downstream towards the sewers. The hat was his only protection against the elements— it didn’t do him any good soaked through.

   The boy knew he hadn’t packed on enough body fat to survive hypothermia, so he desperately clung to his patch-coat, tucked his chin to his chest, and pulled his little body onto the sidewalk. Just as he was shaking himself dry—and of _course_ it would at that moment—the storm broke. There went the hope that maybe it’d pass him by. Maybe it could just stay a light drizzle until he found shelter? 

   Of course, he couldn’t have been so lucky. There was a pleasant drizzle for a minute or two, until fat raindrops started smacking the brim of Snufkin’s already soaked hat and hitting his unprotected calves. He couldn’t stay out in this weather, but there was no _inside_ he could go to that wouldn’t just throw him right back out. The only place he could go to was the forest, where the grass was cool and the earth soft and warm under his paws, but he also _couldn’t_ go there because he never wore bows on his tail and would get thrown into a hemulin jail. Snufkin didn’t like hemulins all that much, or their jails, even if the thought of a (relatively) warm cell with guaranteed meals was an attractive prospect. 

   So he went to the forest anyways, park keeper-be-damned, kicking over all the signs in his way and pretending that he could make a difference by doing so. It made him feel better, at least, even if it made his toes pretty sore. All that kicking _did_ catch up to him eventually, so he left the signs and ventured further into the wood. He was about to give up and just collapse into the mud when he saw something _new._ Planted just outside the open area of the “park” sat a tan tent that most _definitely_ hadn’t been there the previous day, illuminated from within by a cheery orange glow. The rain made it rather hard to smell much of anything, but Snufkin was almost _certain_ that the smell of something cooking—or perhaps just _burning_ , but _semantics_ —was wafting from within it. 

    He saw two choices before himself at that moment— he could stay out in the increasingly heavy rain, dig a hole to sleep in, and risk hypothermia and pneumonia and all the other -ia’s that a child could catch… _Or_ he could pray that maybe, just _maybe_ , whatever stranger occupied that tent would be willing to let him ride out the storm with them. 

 

   Or maybe they’d scream his name at him and throw things.

   At least if they _did_ throw things, Snufkin thought he had a pretty good chance of catching it.

   Mind made up, Snufkin placed one unsteady paw in front of the other, clung to his coat, and rapped his knuckles gently against the tent-flaps.

 

* * *

 

   The Joxter had been in an absolutely _rotten_ state of mind as of late. He kept feeling a dreadful tug in his heart that _perhaps he’d made the wrong choice, leaving Moominvalley,_ and it made his travels increasingly harder. He’d arrive at a quiet mountain village and then be filled with the urge to tell his companions about how _mountain air’s so much crisper than in the lowlands, yah?_ , just to turn and find that he was still standing alone. Or he’d be finishing his dinner and suddenly realize that he’d made far too much for one mumrik to eat all by himself. He had no clue what to do with himself— he _had_ to travel, he’d go crazy cooped up in one place all the time. But he felt like a traitor, leaving like he had without a word to the people who considered him a friend (surely, he thought, against their better judgement). Who would help the Mymble with her dozens of children? Who would find buttons for Muddler? Who would dare tell Moominpappa that his “memoirs-in-progress” were wildly inaccurate? 

   The Joxter was tired of this route his thoughts had been taking-- he had to do _something_ to distract himself. There was no way on the large, beautiful earth he inhabited that he could just spend the rest of his days _longing_. He’d made his choice, so he clearly couldn’t go _back_ to the Valley, because then the very people he’d been longing for would know just how very shitty he was and reject him immediately. 

   So, every night, he gathered his things into his backpack, rolled up his tent, and let his paws guide him. He let the wonders of the places he went keep him busy, let the trouble he got into keep him interested. The years passed him by like he passed by towns, cities, forests, mountains, oceans. He stopped remembering names, stopped being friendly to strangers on the road. He was _free_ in the way he had desired all those years ago and it tore him up inside.

  The road was his only companion anymore as he hopped from settlement to settlement, causing a general ruckus in the way only the Joxter can. 

   Presently, the Joxter was staying in a park outside of a typical hemulin town, because he’d been told that vagabonds were outlawed from loitering in said town. He normally would’ve stayed away from a town with a toll booth, but _this_ town in particular also had tall brick walls on its perimeter, and the Joxter hated being denied access to things much more than he hated toll booths. It wasn’t even particularly hard for him to scale the wall, all things considered. The divots between the bricks made wonderful ledges for his claws, and the only real struggle was not getting caught as he vaulted himself over the top. 

   Of course, when he decided to _leave,_ that would be an entirely different story. He was a mumrik of the present, however, so he happily left the plan of his great escape for The Future Joxter to figure out. 

   The park where he pitched his tent was clearly still within the process of being tamed. There were no marked paths yet, and nature still seemed to be having its way with the area. The Joxter could’ve hidden in those woods forever had he not happened upon the little clearing where busy hemulins were already cutting down trees to make room for decorative shrubs and statues. He managed to slip away before being spotted, but he was sharply reminded of _why_ he was known as the terror of all park keepers.

   Schemes were already formulating in his mind as he slunk back to his tent. He could dig a pit, and lure the park keeper into it— but no, then he’d have to dig a pit in the first place, which was far too much work for a simple scheme. He’d already ripped out the signs in his way, as was his custom, so maybe make a bonfire with them? It might blow his cover, but it would probably be worth it…

   He spent most of the day cooking up ways to get revenge on the unsuspecting park keeper, but still came to a loss when he returned to his tent in the morning. Mumriks are nocturnal, after all— if he missed out on his daytime sleep, he’d be too groggy come nightfall to pull any tricks. 

   Upon waking, the Joxter had finally figured out how he’d prank this town’s park keeper— it was the perfect trick! Just obvious enough to point to sabotage, but not enough to reveal his position. As long as the sky remained cloudless the following day, and he could get his paws on a glass prism— 

   A loud _CRACK!_ of thunder interrupted his line of thought. 

    _Well, shit,_ thought the Joxter. There went his night of hijinks.

   With a sigh, he tied the flaps of his tent together, pulled out his flint and iron, and tried to light a small fire without singing his tent’s walls. If it was going to be a stormy, uneventful night, he preferred to at least be _warm._ Maybe he could get some practice in on that mouth-organ he’d “liberated” from the last settlement. There were leftovers in his pack that he could probably cook into a stew, too, seeing as he couldn’t hunt in a downpour. Couldn’t bother hemulins in a downpour either, which soured his mood, but he tried to not dwell on it. There was always tomorrow! It’d be a setback, but the Joxter had gone through much worse just to pull off a trick! 

   He pulled out his pipe to light it when a faint sound outside his tent—different from the raindrops—caught his attention. At first the Joxter suspected hailstones, which would certainly wreck his tent, but the sound didn’t continue— just paused, seemingly waiting for his reaction, then sounded again more insistently. Curious (and how did that saying go, again? _Curiosity killed the mumrik?_ ), he went to the front of his tent and slowly undid the binding keeping the flaps together. The moment his tent was opened up, a small blur dived in. Gallons of rainwater attempted to follow suit, but the Joxter just barely managed to seal the flaps again.

    _That_ crisis averted, he turned to face whatever it was that had raced into his shelter, when they locked eyes and— _oh, shit, that’s a kid._ The Joxter hadn’t been around children in a while, at least not willingly… Maybe not even since he’d left his dear Mymble behind. The poor scrap was in rags, shivering over the small fire in the middle of the tent as their little tail lay limply on the ground. Clearly orphaned, from the prominence of their bony legs and the tattered state of their coat. The Joxter couldn’t quite tell the sex of the child in front of him, because of the too-large hat on their head hiding their face. He silently mused that maybe they _wanted_ it that way, but he was too polite to assume anything before speaking to them.

   “You, uh… You all right there?” The scrap didn’t reply, so he repeated himself. They turned large, solemn eyes on him before saying quietly that, _no, sir, I haven’t been all right for quite some time,_ to which the Joxter didn’t know how to respond. He opened his mouth a few times, before finally giving up on his attempt at reply. The child— _and did all orphans have such massive_ eyes _?_ —remained quiet afterwards, shivering in place and looking like an all-around, pathetic, sodden lump. Their eyes never strayed from the Joxter, and he found himself with the eerie certainty that he was being judged. He was tempted to tell the child off for staring, but yelling would likely help nothing at the moment.

   Coughing into his sleeve, the Joxter turned from the child and refocused on the small fire. He had to be careful with it, because burning down his shelter would be a bad move for not only him but now the nameless snufkin in his tent, too. Saints alive, the Mymble would have his head if he let a child come to any harm. He _probably_ had enough food to spare, at least for the night. 

   With care he usually didn’t afford his belongings, the Joxter rustled around his pack until he found the frying pan strapped to its side. He placed it by the fire and pulled out a pair of paper-wrapped fish that he’d caught the previous day, and slapped them into the pan. As an afterthought he removed one to clean— the child probably wouldn’t appreciate the mumrik tradition of eating prey whole. Big, brown eyes— _just like my dear Mymble’s,_ he thought—tracked his movements in that unsettling silent way of theirs. “Not much of a talker, eh?” he chanced, not quite meeting the child’s eyes. There was no reply, just the crackling of fish-oil in the pan by his side. 

   “Could I catch your name, at least, little one?”

   He almost missed the mumbled “Snufkin,” but after a moment of wide-eyed shock the Joxter came back to himself. “Your… Your parents named you 'Bastard'?” 

   The child _hmm_ ’d, as if perhaps not knowing the exact connotation of the word, before pulling his hat even lower over his face. “... Named m’self, actually.”

   The Joxter was struck with not knowing if this fact was incredibly sad or incredibly funny. Moomin ( _Moomin_ pappa _, now_ , he scolded himself for the umpteenth time) would probably laugh, but the troll laughed at a great many things that one shouldn’t laugh at, so he was still stuck.

   Only when the smell of singed hair— _singed hair?_ —caught his attention did the Joxter turn back around. The fish were cooking just fine, but lying dangerously close to the cheery little fire was… “ _Fucking shit!_ ” screeched the Joxter, pulling his smoldering tail to his chest, then throwing it back down when he saw it still alight. Desperately he threw off his hat and began stomping on the shriveling hairs, shrieking something fierce while at it. The snufkin apparently thought this hilarious, letting out what started as a giggle, then grew into uproarious laughter. 

    The Joxter was surprised he hadn’t knocked over the tent with all his stomping and jumping and hollering, but was even more surprised when he heard the child’s laughter at his predicament. He couldn’t even spare a moment to be properly offended, for there was still food over the fire that he had to tend to. 

   “You ragamuffin, wild thing, you probably think it’s quite funny, don’t you!” He huffed, pulling the pan off the stone it had lain upon. Snufkin snorted before quickly putting his paws over his nose. The Joxter risked a glance, and— _oh._ The poor thing was _cringing,_ body tensed as if waiting for a blow. “Hey, hey, _hey_ ,” said The Joxter gently, “I'm not going to hit you.”

   Slowly, _ever so slowly_ , Snufkin lowered his paws from his face. “... Ya promise?” 

   The Joxter smiled at this, relieved that he hadn’t made things worse. “I swear it upon my tail, young Snufkin, that I shall never intentionally harm you.” And he said this very soberly, for all small beasts knew that swearing upon one’s tail was a very serious vow to make. “Now… Would you be so kind as to dine with me on this stormy night? I just so happen to have a pair of freshly cooked fish…”

 

* * *

 

  Snufkin ran from that kind stranger in the tent an hour or two after dawn— the storm had calmed itself back into a drizzle, and the mumrik had told Snufkin in no uncertain terms that he was free to leave if he so wished, but to not feel unwelcome. He’d given Snufkin a number of possessions “for safe road travel,” as the man had put it, including-but-not-limited-to a comparatively new coat ( _I’d grown tired of it anyways, little wild thing, you’re the one doing_ me _the favor_ ) and a shiny mouth-organ that felt cool and slick between his paws.

   It felt strange to be _given_ things. 

  Even in his earliest memories, no one had _given_ him anything. Not before they gave it to someone else, at least. The eldest daughter always received toys, clothes, and food first, then My (the unanimously voted ringleader), then it passed down the line until eventually reaching him. 

   Now, he understood he was the youngest. The only thing he’d been _given_ before was the lifeblood in his veins that his parents so kindly lent him. He supposed it was all he needed, or at the very least it was all he _deserved_. The bigger, stronger folk could take what they wanted, and then he could have whatever was left because he was too little to take the choice bits. 

   He took from his siblings first, after they took from him— it was the way of things. But then this mumrik in a tent on a stormy night had to _change_ things, and Snufkin was utterly clueless as to how he should deal with it. 


	2. maybe, just a good book and a heart to break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moomintroll and Snufkin had met under a comet. Some—The Witch, most notably—would declare this a sure sign that they were horrible for each other, or that they would spell doom for any and everyone who found them together. Even the Snorkmaiden would flush a frightened mauve before she got to know Snufkin, almost certain that he was a harbinger of some great evil.  
> Of course, Moomin was quick to shut this nonsense down within the first year of noticing it. Surely, would he not have noticed if the mumrik was a portent of some kind? Moominmamma agreed with him, at least, waving the others’ concerns off with a simple “I doubt it,” and that was all the reasoning in the world that Moomintroll needed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for over 1k reads and 100 kudos! I never expected this fic to become as popular as it has and I appreciate every single one of you!  
> also, it's a three-shot now, because I have no sense of self-control and the Moomins have consumed my waking life  
> (sorry that this chapter is mostly filler.)  
> EDIT: guess who accidentally uploaded the unedited draft?  
> (me. it was me. the issue's been resolved now.)

   Life in Moominvalley was a stark contrast to life as Snufkin had understood it. When he arrived, days before a comet, he was not shooed away or harshly told to end his tramping ways under threat of arrest. Rather, the round, fluffy creatures of the valley—aptly-named, of course, the Moomintrolls—welcomed him with open arms. It was almost frightening how quickly they became attached to him, if he thought about it. What if he’d been some dangerous criminal on the run from the law? 

   Well. He _was_ a criminal on the run from the law, but he wasn’t outright _dangerous!_ Just the very thought of attacking these quaint beasts set Snufkin’s tail a-bristling.

   The Snorks, however, being more superstitious folk, avoided him in the aftermath of the comet. The Snorkmaiden didn’t seem to mind his presence quite as much as the Snork himself, but Snufkin couldn’t help but feel in some way... _Suspicious_ of her. As if, perhaps, she was assessing him just as much as he was her, but under the guise of being so foolish and airheaded that none of the others would notice. 

   Snufkin made a note to be wary, but polite, to her unless further evidence presented itself. The other small beasts in Moominvalley treated him cordially in the first few months, with the exception of the youngest Moomintroll, and, surprisingly, Sniff. The two forced their way into his life and he found he didn’t mind it one bit. He also found quickly that he much preferred Moomintroll’s company to Sniff’s; however, he enjoyed their company, and called both his friends.

   That first year was spent with wild stories and hikes and adventures to the Lonely Mountains. The Moomins invited him to stay in their guest room (he declined), and then respectfully pointed out a suitable campsite near the stream (he moved his tent there immediately). Through the Moomins’ aggressive kindness, the rest of the Valley started to take notice of Snufkin— first he found a small gathering of Creeps at his campsite, then the old Mr. Hemulin started snooping around for “samples,” and on one memorable night, he nearly boiled Little My alive (she’d been napping in his soup pot). The attention made him uncomfortable, but he had to admit that he preferred the Valley’s positive attention to being thrown out on his ear. _Again._

   Snufkin’s patience, however, met its limit when a brown creature looking quite like a steel sponge woke him by stealing his mouth-organ. It had been a particularly warm summer’s night, so he’d left his tent flaps partially untied so as to invite breezes in. Feeling overheated in his coat, Snufkin was sprawled out on a pile of blankets in just his bloomers and undershirt.

   To make a long story short, Mrs. Fillyjonk was woken in the dead of night by a nearly-naked mumrik boy trying to choke the life out of Stinky, which was all at once too much for her, causing her to immediately scream and then faint. The screaming woke The Police Inspector, a young Hemulin recently out of training, who then woke Moominpappa for backup because he was certain that some crook had come to the Valley and killed the Fillyjonks. Moominpappa woke his son, who woke Little My and Sniff for help, who then started hollering that there was a criminal on the loose and thereupon woke the rest of the Valley. By the time The Inspector had amassed a small mob carrying torches and whatever makeshift weapons were by their bedside, Mrs. Fillyjonk had recovered and was watching in abject horror as a naked tramp fought Stinky on her front lawn. She saw something shiny and metal be pried from Stinky’s hands, and, assuming it to be a knife, took up shrieking again. Then the _mob_ appeared, with The Inspector and Moominpappa in the lead, and Mrs. Fillyjonk felt certain that she was about to faint again. Moominpappa had a large— _blunderbuss? shotgun?_ It was too dark to tell—and had started to wave it around (read: nearly hitting Sniff many, many times with a loaded gun).

   Moomintroll, bearing a torch, shoved his way near the action to identify the crooks, then let out a surprised “Snufkin!” Indeed, when the crowd focused on him—still grappling Stinky and yowling something fierce—they saw that it _was_ Snufkin, sans hat, scarf, coat, and anything that could really be considered “proper outside attire.”

   Moominpappa nearly shot him on the spot, but Moomin managed to jostle his Pappa’s arm and send the shot wide. No beast in the Valley particularly liked Stinky (and Moomintroll particularly liked Snufkin), so the mob was willing to give Snufkin a chance— but just barely.

   Stinky had been well and walloped, and Snufkin was holding something shiny in a white-knuckled grip over Stinky’s prone form. It took a moment for the mumrik to notice that he had gathered a crowd, but when he did his ears slammed to either side of his head and his pupils shrank to thin slits from the torches’ glare. Nervously, he removed his foot from Stinky’s—throat? center of mass?—and glanced at his dirtied underclothes. Little My used this moment of distraction to barrel into him and latch on. A sharp pain in his wrist made Snufkin drop his hard-won mouth-organ, yelping and moving his paw protectively to his chest. My scooped her prize from the ground and brandished it at Moomintroll, who started giggling from stress and relief. To her dismay, she had not liberated Snufkin of a knife— instead, in her paws was the vagabond’s famous mouth-organ. Snufkin flinched at how she tossed it to the ground, but left it lying there for fear of getting bitten again. 

 

   It had taken _hours_ to clear everything up with The Police Inspector and disperse the mob. Even after, Snufkin couldn’t help but notice the way that the Valley went back to its old way of treating him, and even though he was used to being ignored it was a harsh blow to his confidence. It’s just— he was _used_ to the Fillyjonks’ glares, and he was used to the suspicious looks from the Snorks. But he’d thought he was _past_ that (or at least, past the Snorks’ radars). To revert to the way most places reacted to tramps after being so welcoming to him was enough to give him emotional whiplash. 

   He remembered, sharply, why he’d never made the effort to stay anywhere more than a week. He, the fool, attached himself to the first kind word, to the first earnest smile, to the first _“you wild thing, you!”._ Snufkin was reminded harshly that nobody _wanted_ a half-breed tramp dirtying up their home, that if he wanted somewhere to call his own he’d be under constant scrutiny to always be better, cleaner, _proper._ Stinky was so insufferably _smug_ afterwards, too, as if things had gone just his way.

   Snufkin almost left Moominvalley for good, and was only kept by Moomintroll’s later suggestion to just “kill Stinky someday, or hate him forever.” 

 

* * *

 

   Moomintroll and Snufkin had met under a comet. Some—the Witch, most notably—would declare this a sure sign that they were horrible for each other, or that they would spell doom for any and everyone who found them together. Even the Snorkmaiden would flush a frightened mauve before she got to know Snufkin, almost certain that he was a harbinger of some great evil. 

   Of course, Moomin was quick to shut this nonsense down within the first year of noticing it. Surely, would he not have noticed if the mumrik was a portent of some kind? Moominmamma agreed with him, at least, waving of the others’ concerns off with a simple “I doubt it,” and that was all the reasoning in the world that Moomintroll needed. 

   Snufkin proved to be a wonderful friend, in any case. Even Little My seemed to like him, once she got used to him (or perhaps it was the other way ‘round?). The Snorkmaiden thought Snufkin had wonderful stories, and many an evening had been spent listening to grand tales of heists and hijinks (Moomin was also _certain_ that he had seen them making each other flower crowns one night, but he had no place to call them out on it because he, too, had been trying to make a crown for his Mamma). Sniff remained rather indifferent, because Snufkin— well, he was never outright _rude_ to Sniff, but he certainly wasn’t one to put up with Sniff’s incessant money talk. They were coming around to each other, at least.

   Moomintroll began to _dread_ his winter hibernation after meeting Snufkin. He knew the mumrik needed to wander, as all mumriks did, but travelling meant that he _left_ while Moomin stayed behind. Staying behind meant that while Snufkin was travelling and making new friends and seeing sights _so much better than Moominvalley_ , he’d be dreaming of a thousand ways to sort out the inexorable feelings that _followed_ Snufkin’s presence in the Valley. But it didn’t really matter, because Moomin never remembered his hibernation dreams and Snufkin always came back in the spring, so, really, why did Moomintroll worry so much? Why did he feel that _wrong_ feeling when Snorkmaiden took his paw and said she loved him? _Why did it feel like those two issues were intrinsically related to each other?_

   Moomintroll had worked himself into a right and proper tizzy just thinking about it. Little My had said he was “pining,” which he thought was awfully rude of her because she _knew_ that boys didn’t pine for their best friends like girls did. He even said as much to her, only to cryptically receive an exhausted sigh. 

   “I just don’t understand girls,” he said to Snufkin one summer afternoon. They were sitting on a hilltop, watching the sun lazily crawl across the sky. Snufkin was playing his mouth-organ, tail thumping to the beat of whatever merry jaunt came from his heart. His playing didn’t stop in response to Moomin’s statement, but it did quiet slightly. Moomin turned to face him and noted how one eyebrow was raised questioningly, and took it as a cue to continue on. “I mean, why are they always filling silence with words, or stopping to pick flowers and put them in their hair? Or talk about marriage and babies and growing old together? You never do that, Snuf.” 

   Snufkin stopped in his playing, setting down the mouth-organ and facing Moomin fully. “Little My doesn’t talk that much, Moomin. _Especially_ not about marriage or babies. Nor does your Mamma, or Too-Ticky, or the Witch. Mymble Junior, maybe, but...” He flicked an ear in Moomin’s direction playfully. “Well, if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were just talking about Snorkmaiden.”

   Moomintroll squirmed, saying nothing. Snufkin leveled a firm stare, prompting Moomin to nervously clutch his own tail. “... Okay, yes. I’m talking about Snorkmaiden.” 

    “What’s wrong? Having trouble in paradise?”

   Moomin blanched, as much as a creature covered in white fur could. “Perrrrhaps…” he said, resolutely looking away from his friend. Not because Snufkin’s face was distracting, or anything! Even if Moomin did sort of want to pet the fine fur that had grown in on Snufkin’s nose and forehead. He wouldn’t, though, because it was rude to just go about petting people, even if they were your best friend of over a decade. _But that’s off-topic! The conversation is about Snorkmaiden, not some silly infatuation!_

   Snufkin blinked, slowly and in a way that seemed deliberate, before picking up his mouth-organ again. “Well, friend, would you like to talk about it, or would you rather I continue playing?” Moomin thought for a moment. “Well, I’d _like_ to talk about it, but I’m not sure you’d understand the problem I’m having.” At Snufkin’s confused look, he elaborated. “I mean, my problem’s about love, and you’ve never really been in love before, so I don’t know how much help you could be—”

   “Moomin, I’ve been in love.” 

“—because Mamma says you can’t really understand love unless you’ve been in it—”

   “Moomintroll!” 

   Moomin snapped to attention, sheepishly trailing off mid-sentence. “Oh, I’m sorry, I talked right over you like that. Please, uh, please go on, Snufkin.” 

   Snufkin shook his head fondly, before glancing back at Moomin. “I said I, uh, I said I’ve been in love, Moomintroll. I understand the semantics and all the what-have-yous of it. If you, um, still want to tell me what’s wrong?”

   Moomin tried to hide the sinking feeling in his gut by nodding at his friend. “Well, um, y’see, about her. About Snorkmaiden!” He looked off into the distance. “We, uh, had an argument? And I might’ve said something I shouldn’t’ve. Something I really, _really_ shouldn’t have said to her.” His fur was burning at just the memory of it. Moomin was certain that if Snufkin looked hard enough he’d see how red his ears were. “I don’t think we’ll be together anymore, Snufkin. I rather think she’ll try to kill me, if I don’t go into hiding.”

   Snufkin’s ears perked at this, almost knocking his hat off his head. Snorkmaiden was practically _devoted_ to Moomintroll. She’d been fawning over him since before Snufkin had met her— why in the world was Moomin so certain she’d given up on him? 

   Snufkin said as much, albeit with a tad fewer words.

   Moomin waffled for some time, anxiously rubbing his arms and _still_ refusing to look at Snufkin directly. The rest of the evening progressed similarly— Moomintroll would swear up and down that he _wanted_ to tell Snufkin more, but had no clue as to _how_. At Moomin’s (frankly unsubtle) hinting, Snufkin let the subject be set aside in favor of a story from the last winter about he’d stolen an entire cheese wheel from a boy covered in frogs. Moomin felt his friend’s gaze boring into his shoulder the rest of the evening, but Snufkin didn’t try to bring it back up. 

 

   Moomintroll appreciated that about him.

 

* * *

 

   “Friends, we are gathered here today to mourn Moomintroll, son of Moominpappa, son of Moominpappa, son of Moominpappa, et cetera. He lived a short, but eventful life; we will remember him for being especially pig-headed and about as observant as the stump I’m standing on, but loveable nonetheless. While he yet lives, the Snorkmaiden has promised me that his time is limited, and we probably won’t find a body once she gets to him.

   “Now, Sniff— do you need a handkerchief, Sniff? Here, I have one—” Little My hopped off of her tree stump perch, patting Sniff on the back as he sobbed grossly. Snorkmaiden had tearily recounted her horrible breakup with Moomintroll the previous day, ending with a sharp, “ooh, I’ll kill him, My!” 

   Being the good friends they were, Sniff and Little My had immediately arranged a funeral for the troll. Various small beasts of the Valley were in attendance, unfortunately including Stinky, whom nobody had invited. The Moominparents were sitting respectfully in the back of the crowd, clapping politely when prompted and throwing flower petals into the breeze for dramatic flair. Moominpappa was ragingly drunk, as was to be expected at a formal event.

   With Sniff (mostly) handled, My gave his back a hearty slap and clambered back onto her stump. “—as I was saying, Moomintroll’s spirit will live on in our hearts and minds, but probably mostly in Snufkin’s. Snorkmaiden might kill them both, though, making this a double-funeral, so be sure to think of Snufkin, too, if you have the capacity.” 

   The audience clapped, albeit rather awkwardly, as none of them had been to a funeral before and weren’t quite sure on how to respond to a eulogy. Moominpappa’s response of violently throwing up and passing out, at least, was agreed upon as “inappropriate funeral behavior.”

 

* * *

  
  


    _ ~~Dear Mymble,~~_ ~~_—_~~ no, that wasn’t right.

    ~~ _My dearest,_ _—_~~ no, that was even worse. He hadn’t seen her in nearly two decades.

    ~~ _Mymblemamma,_ _—_~~ well, it’s a step in the right direction.

    _Mymble.—_ that’d have to work. The Joxter had scratched out enough openings, and there wasn’t room for any more. He desperately wanted to call her his dearest, his love, his first butterfly of the spring, but the Mymble wasn’t his _anything._ He gave up that right when he ran, even if his heart still sang for her years later. He wasn’t sure what possessed him to write her a letter, but here he was, sitting criss-cross in his tent, stationary pressed flat against a book in a language he couldn’t read, pen in trembling paw. 

   Was he writing an apology? _Should_ he?

   He took a steadying breath. 

   He’d waffled long enough. She deserved _something_ more than the pathetic note he’d scrawled when he left. If the Mymble hated him, he thought, he could at least give her more substantial fuel for her hearth. 

   The Joxter placed his pen to paper, and he wrote.

 

* * *

  
  Their afternoons were gentle, with the sweet smell of summer grass heavy in their noses and the humming of insects filling the air. Birds sang their brightest notes; frogs whistled and croaked in a harmony they alone knew. When they fished together, or hiked, or sat on a grassy knoll in comforting silence, they could pretend that nothing else in the world existed but for that warm, sweet, hazy day when two boys were themselves, alone, together. Maybe their next adventure was waiting for them, just past the next bend; maybe their next adventure was each other. 

   “I like the way you say my name,” said one to the other, pausing to giggle to himself. “Mew-meeeen-truhllll,” he drawled. “You lilt it like it’s a poem, or a song.”

   The other quirked an eyebrow at this, lifting his hat ever-so-slightly above his eyes. He glanced at his companion, and smiled gently. “So it may be, Moomintroll, but—” he pitched his voice up, and warbled “‘Snyuuuuuuf-kiiyen.’” 

   Moomintroll gasped in fake offense, placing a paw over his chest. “I do _not_ say your name like that!” 

   Snufkin snorted, turning to face Moomin fully. “You _absolutely_ say my name like that, Moomee.” 

   Moomin huffed at this, lifting a fist pointedly. “I’m sorry, Snuf, but you’ve earned this!” He tapped Snufkin on the shoulder with perhaps a little too much enthusiasm, knocking them both over onto the grass. Multiple things happened at once in response to this— first, Snufkin let out a yelp that turned into a screech as he felt Moomin toppling onto him, then Moomin tried to get back up, and in doing so elbowed Snufkin in the groin, causing him to shriek like some ungodly bird of prey. Moomin, not noticing that he’d hit his friend in such a delicate area, dropped all his weight back onto his elbows in shock. Snufkin, now in immense pain and feeling he was being castrated, reacted by using every mymble child’s prime defense— he sank his teeth into the first thing he could reach (that being Moomintroll’s shoulder). Moomin let out a yelp of his own, rolling away from Snufkin with such ferocity that he nearly took some teeth with him. 

   “What the _heck,_ ” wheezed Snufkin at the same time that Moomin screamed “what the _fuck_ was that!?”

 

   Their afternoons were... not _quite_ so gentle, after all.

 

* * *

 

~~_Dear Mymble,_ ~~

~~_My dearest,_ ~~

~~_Mymblemamma,_ ~~

_Mymble._

_Please don’t hate me. Or maybe you already do? You probably do hate me, which I understand, because I left you in the dead of night to raise twenty_ ~~ _-for_~~ _- ~~fuor~~_ _-fore children on your own. That was wrong of me, I was scared but that does not make it ok._ ~~ _I love you_ _I loved you_~~ _I miss you. Evry time I see red hair, I think I will turn around and it will be you but it is not, it is never you, and my_ ~~ _greef_~~ _grief increases. I should not have left you, but you deserve better than a tramp like me. I hope that when you are reeding this you reed it with_ ~~ _a man_~~ _someone who will treat you better than I did. Someone who will stay with you all year and until your hair goes_ ~~ _gray_~~ _grey and is nice to your children._

    _ ~~I met a snufkin a few years after I left Moominvalley, with big brown eyes and all I culd think of was how your eyes were also brown, like the earth and tree bark and the sparrow’s wing. I thought that maybe I wuld hav wanted a child with you, if you had also wanted one, because even though mumriks aren’t fathers I thought maybe I culd be a pretty good one if I had a baby with big brown eyes that looked like yours.~~   _

_I hope you are well. Even if you do not hope I am well. I wuld understand if you did not hope I am well, because I do not deserve to be. I wish we had spent more time together, or that I had not left in the first place since now I can not come back because you all hate me for ever for leaving like a_ ~~_cowherd_~~ _coward._

_If it is alright with you I will ask some questions, you do not have to answer but if you do give your response to the Muddler he is pretty gud at finding me._

_Has little My gotten big yet? I know she was not very old when I last saw her but she does not strike me as the type to let herself get very big. Has anyone got married yet, or found love? How many children do you have by now? Is_ ~~_Junior_~~ _your eldest still living with you or has she struck out on her own? I wuld ask about your other children but I have forgot their names._

    ~~ _Writing a letter was a more romantic idea_~~ _~~much nicer idea befor I did it.~~_

~~_All my love_ ~~

_Best wishes,_

_Joxaren Joxaryl_

 

* * *

 

   “He’s just flaunting it, now!” cried the Snorkmaiden to the Mymble’s eldest and Little My over tea. “We broke up three days ago and he’s already— he and _Snufkin_ are—” The eldest mymble placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, offering a handkerchief and listening patiently. “Now, Snorkmaiden, whatever makes you think that Moomin and Snufkin are doing _anything_ so risque?” Little My surreptitiously stopped shovelling scones into her mouth to listen because she, like most people who knew the two, desperately hoped for the day Snufkin and Moomintroll would stop pining and just get together. 

   “I saw them yesterday,” said Snorkmaiden, dabbing at her eyes with Junior’s hanky. “They were coming back from the forest, tails twined, and they were all covered in grass stains—which, of course, isn’t _too_ odd, it’s impossible to keep things clean on an adventure—I don’t think Moomin knew I was there, because he said to Snufkin, ‘I hope I didn’t hurt your willy,’ and, okay, I’m getting suspicious, but then Snufkin says ‘I hope I didn’t bite your shoulder too hard’! And when I snuck a look, Moomintroll had a bite mark right where his shoulder met his neck! How can you accidentally bite someone’s neck?”

   Mymble Jr. thought on this for a moment, _hmm_ ’ing into her tea. Little My cackled in such a way that sounded almost like she was saying “kinky,” but her sister elected to ignore it. 

   “Well,” she said, gently, “based on _how_ Moomintroll broke up with you, are you really surprised?” Snorkmaiden sighed and shook her head. “I just didn’t think something like _this_ would happen so soon, Mymble. Maybe a selfish part of me hoped Snufkin would reject him.”

   Little My, agitated by—well, a _lot_ of things, regarding her sister and Snorkmaiden’s conversation—suddenly loosed a snarl much larger than one would expect from a mymble so small. A pair of booted feet stomped their way across the table until she was uncomfortably close to Snorkmaiden’s face, at which point My took a handful of her mane and hissed, “I’m going to say this once so you’d better tell me what I need to hear, Snorkmaiden!”

   She leaned in, all hot breath and sharp teeth as she hissed, “You’ve told my sister why Moomin left you, which means you’ve told half the Valley by proxy! Nobody thought to tell _me,_ so could I please just know why you think he’s off having naval engagements with Snufkin instead of you? This is important! I’ve been waiting twelve years for this, so you’d better not be telling tales!”

   The Snorkmaiden flushed a frightened and embarrassed yellow, making eye contact with Mymble Jr. before looking back at My’s depraved expression (and certainly not trying to lean as far away from the mymble as possible).

   “Well, My, y’see, funny story, that one is…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ;P


	3. i'll make a mistress of a pretty wiccan thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you remember last night, when I woke you up?”  
> “Not really... Wait, maybe a little bit? You asked how I’d, uh, ‘deliver some unpleasant news,’ or something like that? I don’t really remember what I said, you’ll have to remind me.”  
> “You said to bake a cake, Snuf. That’s why I’m— why I _was_ baking one.”  
> Snufkin grimaced. “Is this a set-up to you saying you’re about to propose to the Snorkmaiden, so I’ve got to stop sleeping in your bed?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  ***rolls up 4 months late, rattling an empty slurpee cup***  
>  so I was homeless for a while lol
> 
> In all seriousness, though, I'm sorry that it took me this long to get chapter three out! I promise that this work is not dead and will _not_ die anytime soon. I just had to take care of Cap, first, no matter how much I wanted to return to the wonderful Moomins. But! I'm back now, only _legally_ homeless and mostly stable, so I've been spending the past couple of days frantically reviewing what I'd already written for this chapter, writing and subsequently scrapping draft after draft, and I think I can finally say I've Frankensteined together something to keep this fic afloat while I finish that gods-forsaken ending. It is 4am for me right now.
> 
> Sorry that I keep extending the chapter count! I swear, next one _will_ be the last one, because I had to cut this one for length. Otherwise it would've been something nearing 9,000 words, and given the formatting of this fic that's just. way too much for one chapter.  
> Thanks for over 2,000 reads and 300 kudos! I never would have expected that other people would read my shitty word vomit fanfic and like it enough to actually put their usernames on it forever. Love y'all!

* * *

   “Lit _tle My_!” exclaimed the Mymble’s Eldest Daughter, grabbing My by the hair and, like she would with an unruly toddler, held her sister on her hip. “Now, you and I _both_ know you were raised with better manners than that!”

   Little My was wriggling with all her might to escape her sister’s hold, but eventually settled down and let herself be held. She was still scowling, of course, and showing off her teeth, but that was to be expected. Little My was _always_ scowling, excepting the occasions where she felt like merrily skipping through the hillside every now and again.

   As the Snorkmaiden watched the familiar squabble of Mymble children, the fluorescent yellow leached from her fur. She had half a mind to tell off My for jumping her like that, while the other half was acutely aware that doing so would only encourage Little My to jump her _again,_  but at some point in the unspecified future that would put her, and by extension, most everybody else, increasingly on edge until the inevitable attack. 

   With as much grace as she could muster, Snorkmaiden placed her cup on the tea table and swallowed nervously. “I’d, uh, I’d forgotten that I hadn’t told you and Sniff the specifics, My,” she said as levelly as possible, not quite meeting either mymble’s eyes. “But! Seeing as we’re here now, in this spot where I _certainly do not_ fear what you will do to me if I _don’t_ share, let’s start at the beginning— that, uh, sound quite right to, to you?”

 

* * *

 

   “Snufkin,” said Moomintroll in the middle of the night (this being a night taking place _before_ a series of events went down that ultimately ended with a prehumous funeral and allegations of Snufkin being a homewrecker), curled completely platonically around his best friend. “Snuufkin.” He heard a bleary _mmrp?_ and some rustling as Snufkin shifted, then saw two bright yellow discs blinking groggily at him. Voice thick with sleep, Snufkin mumbled “yes, Moomintroll?”

   “How might one, uh— how would, uh, would you— how would you gently tell someone some particularly unpleasant news?”

   The mumrik blinked. “I, uh? _Me?_ I’d, um. A, a cake, I guess? What— what news are you trying to deliver?”

   “Never— nevermind, Snuf. Go back to sleep.”

   Snufkin yawned loudly, kicking off some blanket in an attempt to feel the weak summer breeze. “There’s somethin’ to unpack there, Moom, but ‘m tired, so—” he yawned again, “—’m not gonna ask abou’ it until the mornin’...” He trailed off, snuggling deeper into Moomin’s fur and promptly falling back asleep. 

   Platonically, of course. 

 

* * *

 

   Perhaps it wasn’t the best way to express his feelings— _those being the ones that felt like they were curling in his gut until they swelled, rising to choke his throat and wrap around his teeth and tongue and pierce his temples until his whole body ached with the unspoken words that swirled in his head_ —but for Moomintroll, baking in the early hours of the morning, as dawn stretched across the sky with rosy splendor, was quite enough for him. His parents and (his, he so _desperately_ wanted to say _his_ ) Snufkin were still asleep, tucked into warm beds and dreaming pleasant dreams.

    _Perhaps Little My was right_ , he thought as he measured out ingredients, _that I_ am _pining for Snufkin._  

   His childhood apron was a tad tight on Moomin, considering that he’d grown so wide and delightfully round in past years. As he bustled around the kitchen, setting timers and whisking frosting, the pinch around his waist was ever-present in his mind. It reminded him of his friends, in a funny way; like that blasted apron, he couldn’t keep pretending that everything still fit. He was struck with the uncomfortable thought then that perhaps it was _him_ that needed to change. He kept thinking about the people around him as if they were static year after year, when it went against any beast’s nature to remain so.

   It was _easy,_ though. _Painfully_ simple, and so comforting when everything else in the whole wide world was swirling with uncertainty and choked with expectation. It was so dreadfully _easy_ to think Snufkin only returned every spring because he had promised Moomintroll he would; that Sniff would still faint at the first whiff of danger, or that My was an awful, immature little beast who acted vindictively and cared only for what was funny or pleasing to her and her alone, because he’d be so pleasantly surprised when it turned out false again and again and _again_. 

   Then Moomin thought a little bit harder, turning his focus towards the thoughts he rarely ever tried to think too hard about. He thought about how, really, had he and Snorkmaiden ever _decided_ that they were dating? Had either ever decided if they _wanted_ to be? Distantly he thought that perhaps, when The Comet had come and caused its fuss, he had proclaimed the Snorkmaiden lovely and attractive, because that was what fine young moomins said about fine young maidens. 

   But that had changed, he was certain, because he saw the Snorkmaiden and he _knew_ that, yes, she was fine and fair and lovely, but that was no reason to be _attracted_ to her. Mrs. Fillyjonk was, in her own way, fine and fair and could be considered lovely if one squinted and turned their head to the side. But no one told him he should be attracted to Mrs. Fillyjonk for the aforementioned features, now, did they? Now, that could be written off as because Mrs. Fillyjonk had children Moomin’s age, and he would agree that that was quite a dampener on any sort of attraction. Still— his point stood. He enjoyed Snorkmaiden’s presence. They were great friends, and had been such since they were children. 

   Did he want to marry her? Well, no, not in particular. Not any more than he wanted to marry Sniff or Little My or The Groke, really. Everyone said that they _would_ be married, though, that his aversion to her as of late was a case of cold feet, or, in one instance, an implication that he was preparing to _propose._ The Snork said that they were “practically brothers-in-law already,” that he would be a great uncle for his little sister’s sake, that he was surprised there weren’t “little moomin-snorks running around yet.” In fact, just about everyone in the gods-forsaken _Valley_ treated the possibility of Moomintroll and Snorkmaiden’s relationship furthering as a _yet,_ not an _if._ They weren’t engaged _yet._ They hadn’t planned a wedding _yet._ They hadn’t had _children,_ always followed by that insufferable _yet_ , because obviously everyone wanted kids and would inevitably have them! Moomintroll wanted to yell, _what if we just don’t ever get married? What if I don’t_ want _to be married to Snorkmaiden, and never have? What if I socked you in the mouth for every “_ yet, yet, yet! _”_ _that has spilled from it?_

    _“Love is wonderful, and hard, but always worth it,”_ Mamma and Pappa would always tell him if he asked, but he never _felt_ the wonderful part anymore, at least, not with Snorkmaiden.

   But, then, it was simpler in that vein to think that maybe infatuation was the shortest part of loving someone; all relationships are basically the same when boiled down to their basest elements, right? The Snorkmaiden loved him, and he could lie to himself and say he loved her right back in the same way, because couples had to work together like that. He could share his days and nights with her and forget that she expected him to be the kind of man he wasn’t, and as the days and months and years passed maybe he could fool himself into thinking that he _was_ that man, or was capable of becoming him, because then she’d be happy and his parents would be happy and no one would look at Moomintroll just to feel pity for the miserable thing wearing his skin. 

   It was all at once too much for him, swirling around his head and draining the zest he’d had upon waking. Moomin had buried these thoughts deep inside of himself, crammed into a corner of his mind he never ventured near, tamped down and packed so tightly together that they exploded outwards like the evils of the world from Pandora’s pithos. He could not restrain his mind any longer; one can only lie to themselves for so long before the shaky foundation they’ve built crumbles into dust. The sun rose, and colors burst across the sky, and Moomintroll was having a breakdown in his parents’ kitchen.

   Distantly, he registered the poor bowl of frosting he’d been overmixing, setting it down and sighing as his limbs suddenly felt far too heavy to keep him upright. A timer _ding_ ed to his left. He was hyperaware of the sound, of the padding of his feet on wood, of the dragging of his tail behind him. A part of his mind screamed that he should’ve put on mitts before opening the oven, but it was foggy and far-off as he reached numbly for the cake pan. 

   Moomin was harshly shocked out of his fog as he touched the searing metal, the meaty flats of his paws pressed firmly on the pan. He let out a howl of pain, _thwack_ ing one paw on the top of the oven as he yanked it out. Just reaching over to the sink, grasping the faucet-handle as loosely as possible, hurt in a way so searingly bone-deep that Moomin very nearly shouted from the pure effort of it. He could hardly feel the gush of cold water on his pawpads past the worryingly deep feeling of fire under his skin. It was such a novice mistake to make, he thought— ever since he could see above the counter, Moomin had been cooking—or at least assisting his Mamma until she deemed him old enough to cook with her—and the _first_ rule he had learned, the one thing Moominmamma never wanted him to discover for himself, was that unprotected paws _cannot_ touch things fresh out of the oven; fur burns too easily, and when one is covered in soft fur, a small burn can spread to a whole-body scorch and a naked troll.  

   Seeing the curled and blackened hairs on his paws frightened Moomintroll more than he cared to admit, and the awful stench coming from them was nigh-overwhelming. A series of thumps and thuds sounded overstairs, and Moomin realized that he had probably woken the rest of Moominhouse up with all his shouting and yelping, as it were. Just running cool water on his paws was wonderful, but he was a young troll and the thought of leaving his mess for his family to clean up after him was rather embarrassing. 

   With an awkward sort of-shuffle he stretched and leaned until he could turn the oven off, before quickly putting his paw back under the faucet. If he was lucky, he thought, Mamma or Pappa would come downstairs and help him take care of the kitchen. If he was unlucky, it would be Snufkin, come to investigate the noise and then, upon arriving, would see Moomin’s ineptness at even making a simple recipe that has been done countless times with little issue by millions and billions and trillions of people. Snufkin would probably ask less questions, though— now, don’t get him wrong, Moomin loved his parents, really, he did! But Mamma and Pappa would take one look at him and _know_ he was distracted, and then he’d have to say he was off _thinking_ again, which was the one thing he was typically advised to do in small, digestible doses. 

   Moomintroll sighed. At least his cake wasn’t ruined.

 

* * *

 

   Snufkin wasn’t entirely sure what had woken him up. He was tangled in blankets, a sunbeam warming his back, his face smashed between two pillows. For all intents and purposes, he would’ve happily remained asleep for another few hours— maybe he’d gotten up before the sun when he was a child, but he’d been so _tired_ as of late. Vainly, he tried to gather the fading dreamstuff in his head and fall back asleep, but no matter how he shifted and wriggled he remained stubbornly awake. To top it off, Moomintroll was already out of bed, which led Snufkin to feeling guilty for how late he’d slept in. 

   He groaned, swinging his legs off the bed and wincing at the crackles in his spine upon standing. There was a kink at the base of his tail from sleeping on it funny, which he _knew_ would bother him all day, but no amount of stretches or desperately slamming into a wall back-first managed to pop it. With a huff he changed out of his nightclothes and began putting on his “proper” daytime attire (although he would’ve gladly spent the rest of his life in his borrowed pajamas that smelled so strongly of Moomintroll. Maybe if he never unbuttoned his coat, no one would notice?). He had a leg and a half in his bloomers when a loud shout startled him into simultaneously shoving his other foot through the pant leg and falling spine-first onto the wooden floor. 

   Snufkin had two immediate thoughts, regarding the shout:

One, the kink in his tail was gone.

Two, _that was Moomintroll’s voice._

   His eyes went wide and he scrambled to his feet, claws popping out as he realized that what he heard was a shout of _pain,_ _there was no humor in that sound—!_ Was someone breaking into Moominhouse? Typically only Stinky had the gall for that, but surely the damned hooligan knew that Snufkin was spending the night there, was laying claim to the place? 

   Snufkin threw the bedroom door open in a panic, racing down the stairs on all fours and nearly tripping with what little regard he held for personal safety at the moment. He let out a sharp hiss as his hip slammed into the banister, but his main concern was a wild running loop of _Moominmoomintrollhe’shurtsomething’shappenedI’vegottabethereI’vegottaBETHERE!_

   He finally, _finally_ reached the kitchen, paws fumbling with the doorknob before he grit his teeth and rammed his shoulder into the door. It hurt much more than he’d care to admit. However, bruises-be-damned, the door flew open, Snufkin nearly tumbling tail over head from the force of the displaced energy.

   “Moomintroll!” he gasped, hackles raised. A fluffy white face turned to greet him, paws pad-up under a stream of water in the sink. Moomin’s ears did a little dance of lowered-flattened-perked, tail giving a little twitch as he said “Snufkin!” in a tone that felt ever so slightly strangled. 

   Slowly, nervously, Snufkin paused to take in the scene. His pupils were still blown out and his ears laid flat, but he had managed to restrain his tail to jerky, minute twitches instead of a full-on thrash. He hesitantly sputtered an “are you— are you all right, Moomintroll?” and withheld the urge to physically take hold of his friend. 

   The troll looked confused for a moment, head tilting and a crease forming between his brows. Then it dawned on him, that he must’ve let out a great cry and that he smelled like _fire, dear Lord, Moomee, why do you smell like_ fire _?_ A guilty expression crossed Moomintroll’s face, and he hunched his shoulders shyly. 

   “Well, Snuf, this is a little embarrassing, but well— I got a little… distracted, I just, just made a rookie mistake while baking and I’m— shit, Snuf, I’m sorry that I woke you.” 

   Snufkin let his tail thrash at this, a rumbling wave of _fear-love-relief-fight-or-flight_ violently crashing into and washing over him. “You’re, you’re okay, though?”

   Moomintroll turned off the faucet, shaking water from his paws, and turned bodily towards his friend. The look on his face was incredibly gentle for someone who smelled like he’d just fought an oven. He gingerly took a step forward. “Pardon me for the sap,” he said, and gingerly placed a paw on Snufkin’s shoulder, “but I do believe I’m feeling much better now that you’re here.”

   Now, Snufkin had every right to shove the paw away, to say _you got me all worked up over nothing!_ But Moomintroll was very handsome, and very soft, and Snufkin had to look away and hide the heat in his face by coughing into his elbow because _it is very_ hard _to stay mad at him when he’s so lovely, makes one want to ask “do you want me to kiss it better?” as if he didn’t have a dedicated girlfriend—_

   Instead, he said, “do- do you need me to uh, to, uh, help with the, uh, all that,” and pointed vaguely at the cake precariously left on the still-open oven door. Snufkin didn’t wait for a response before awkwardly ducking out from under Moomin’s arm, face uncomfortably warm and ears low enough to touch his shoulders. There was an awkward moment of almost-eye contact as he slipped on the oven mitts, and an even more awkward moment as he tried to move the cake onto the counter without getting smacked by the oven door as it swung upward from the loss of weight. Snufkin was quiet for a beat after he took the mitts off, then twitched an ear curiously.

   “What were you even making a cake for?”

   He was looking at Moomintroll out of the corner of his eye, would’ve missed the troll’s subtle flinch if they hadn’t grown up together. 

   “Do you remember last night, when I woke you up?”

   “Not really... Wait, maybe a little bit? You asked how I’d, uh, ‘deliver some unpleasant news,’ or something like that? I don’t really remember what I said, you’ll have to remind me.”

   “You said to bake a cake, Snuf. That’s why I’m— why I _was_ baking one.”

   Snufkin grimaced. “Is this a set-up to you saying you’re about to propose to the Snorkmaiden, so I’ve got to stop sleeping in your bed?”

   Moomintroll wanted to scream, wanted to shake Snufkin by the shoulders and snarl _“not_ you _too!”_ He wanted the man he was maybe probably in love with to know instinctually why Moomintroll was frustrated and say _“a-ha! But of course you would be letting the Snorkmaiden know that your heart lies in the conquest of men!”_ or, rather, something more along the lines of what Snufkin might _actually_ say, like “well, Moomee, what pursuit is more noble than dismantling a lie you never needed to go along with? Let’s go fishing now!” and then they’d go fishing, and maybe hold paws, and it would be nice.

   But Moomintroll was a coward, so he said, instead, “You wound me, Snuf, that you might suggest I’d ever throw you out of my bed like some common cat! And also, uh, pass me that frosting over there, would you?” and he began piping words onto his lumpily-frosted cake while looking pointedly away from the one person he would happily spend hours staring at.

   

 

* * *

 

   “Are you all right?”

   “‘M fine.”

   “You don’t look it. You’re sulking.”

   “Go look at yourself, Snuf. You aren’t so pretty right now either.”

   “Least I can sit on the porch without lookin’ like my parents just died.”

   “What’re you doin’ up there, anyways?”

   “I’m… well, uh,” a pause. Snufkin took a long drag on his pipe, then mumbled out a “waitin’ for the world to end, I s’pose,” between hacking coughs. 

   “I’d say you’ve got a long-ass time to wait for it,”

   “Watch your mouth. Just wait for that comet to come back, we’ll see who’s right.”

 

* * *

 

   When Snufkin was younger, he had awoken before even the most ambitious of songbirds. As a child, he used to take advantage of this behavior to clean up and clear out of an area unseen and thereby un _bothered_. Sometimes, he’d wake so quickly after falling asleep that the moon was still high, and although he had perfectly fine night-eyes and a propensity to slink through shadows, the young boy would often spend the coming hours vainly trying to fall back asleep before dawn. As he grew older, though, he grew more weary. His body _hurt,_ some cruel swinging bout of heavy, leaden limbs and a mind full of tar that dragged on his days and made his fingers itch for a pipe.

   There were many reasons for this change, he was sure; sometimes Snufkin would sit down, fill his pipe with whatever was on hand, and smoke down to the ashes pondering just _what_ those reasons might be. It was a funny kind of hope, in that sense. If there is a cause there is an effect is a solution. All he had to do to stop hurting was find out a _why,_ find a common denominator that neatly tied up his worldly issues with a pretty little bow and left him to live free and gaily. 

    Around his fourteenth-fifteenth- _maybe-it-was-the-sixeteenth-actually_ spring—he didn’t know his _actual_ birthday, so he chose his favorite season as a marker of age—his joints started acting funny, and his hips always ached at the end of the day. He didn’t quite get better when he became an adult, but, well, at least he didn’t get _worse_.

   The smoking helped, though it hurt his throat something awful.

   Snufkin had started smoking at a young age, learning how to stuff a pipe one particular winter that passed by in a light-headed blur. Although he didn’t meet many other mumriks on his travels, the ones he spoke to had the same kind of attitude about them. Rather like cats, the whole lot, but they all offered good ‘nip, winking conspiratorially as they huffed and spoke of The Good Old Days, before “capitalism” (whatever that was) and parks and their keepers existed and fields of ganja and catnip were everywhere. It seemed rather fanciful to Snufkin, but grown folk didn’t usually like when he pointed such things out. 

   They would tell tales of their travels, if he kept them on that track, and he much preferred it to being asked why he was so unusually gangly and why his fur hadn’t quite grown in yet. He didn’t know the answers, anyways; he was Just Snufkin, and that was all that mattered to him. All sorts of theories had rattled around in his head, thrown at him and caught in the same turn. Perhaps a lack of nutrition from an early age had kept his fur patchy (but it wasn’t really as _patchy_ as it was just _severely lacking in certain places_ ), or maybe he was just still too young (though other mumriks kept saying he should be hairier at his age, that his smooth face and furless back were unusual and an anomaly). One fellow traveler, an old mymblematron who exchanged food for stories, said he “rather smelled like one of her brood used to,” which confused him but prompted her to give him a heavy quilt and an overly-generous portion of stew whenever they crossed paths in the winter.

    He’d be lying if he were to say he hadn’t overthought her off-handed comment for quite some time after, that perhaps he wasn’t just a late bloomer. That maybe he hadn’t just been a dumb kid when he was little, so boldly proclaiming that he was a mymble despite having shiny night-eyes and a decidedly feline appearance. 

   There were memories in the back of his head, fuzzy and distilled to their key components, of being around others like him. Memories of someone much larger than him humming off-key tunes as a radio spat out grainy songs behind them. Snufkin was certain that there had been many, many little ones like him, screaming and laughing and playing merrily with nary a thought but to be young and free and happy. The faces were obscured, voices a pulsing tide that grew ever louder. They’d squeal and tug on his tail and— well, he wasn’t sure what else, but he remembered it as _warm._  

   He’d loved the forest even then, with a bone-deep yearning that tugged at his bones and drove his feet to wander away from the safety of his siblings.

   Snufkin didn’t know what had happened between these almost-dreams and the present he found himself in. It was enough to say that he’d just always been the way he was, that he sprung up one fine morning fully-formed. He’d say _I was found in a basket,_ and it was accepted because it held a shining kernel of truth and opened no doors for _“but what about your parents?”_ due to the implications being that they had probably tried to drown him since he’d been dumped into a river. It was a safe answer.

   And if, hidden in his heart, he liked to think that perhaps there was a pair of maybe-mumriks-or-mymbles-or-somethings-else looking for their long-lost son, well, that wasn’t really anyone’s business, now, was it?

 

* * *

 

   “He just, well. He invited me over, said he had something he’d been working on for a long time that he wanted to show me.”

   Little My peered at her, arms crossed as she somehow managed to look down her nose at someone four times her size. “I didn’t ask about your sex life, Snork.”

   The Snorkmaiden flushed an indignant maroon, cracking a scone in her paw as Little My snickered over her own joke. Colors flashed across her fur like fireworks before she sighed, and said dryly, “yes, very funny of you, My, you’re right on top of the dirty jokes, nothing slips past you, et cetera. Really hammered in the stereotype that mymbles like sex. I hadn’t forgotten it. Now, might I continue with the story _you_ demanded I tell?”

   My huffed, sitting back down on her sister’s lap for a few moments before deciding to settle on the back of the couch instead like a particularly unpleasant cat. She made a “go ahead” gesture with her hand.

   The Snorkmaiden coughed, taking a sip of her now-lukewarm tea before she continued, “well, as I was saying, he wanted me to come over and see something. So, I make myself pretty, because I was thinking, ‘you know, we’ve gotten to that age where he’s probably going to be asking The Question pretty soon,’ and I was figuring he’d probably ‘manned up’ as it were and had gotten over those awful cold feet he always gets before something important. So, I’m all made up, I’m wearing those lovely earrings and that pearl anklet I got last summer—the one that reflects my fur colors so well, you know the one—and I’m all ready to be like ‘oh, yes, Moomin, you’ve made me the happiest snork in the world,’ yadda yadda, when guess who would be walking out the door as I arrive but fuckin’ Snufkin!”

   My was starting to look a little bored, which, okay, _rude,_ but Jr. was appropriately captivated and nodded along at the right parts, causing the Snorkmaiden to turn into a pleased pink. At least _someone_ was listening to her.

   “You’ll probably have guessed this next part, because the boys are just _so_ _obvious—_ couldn’t keep a secret to save their lives, I swear—but Snufkin steps out, not even wearing a shirt, hair a mess and complaining under his breath about ‘how sore his tail’s gonna be later,’ as if I’m not right there and fully capable of hearing his goddamn stage-whisper of a mutter! So I decide if our friendship is worth less to him than a tumble with Moomintroll—” at this, Little My’s ears perked as she suddenly shot up, now fully paying attention, “—then I’ll just walk on in as if _that_ didn’t just happen. And I walk in, and Moomin’s in the kitchen, he says ‘wait out there for a second,’ and I’m seriously considering saying no at this point because he doesn’t even have the decency to try and hide that he’s always got a tramp over— and, yes, it’s _Snufkin,_ but who knows what diseases he’s gotten off the road. I don’t want to get, like, crabs just because my only option has a thing for vagabonds. So, yeah, Moomin’s in the kitchen, I’m just waiting there hoping I don’t have to keep standing much longer. Then he says, ‘okay, come in now,’ which is kinda lazy of him but whatever, I can let that slide so I walk into the kitchen and he’s got a big dumb grin on his face and he’s standing over a cake that he probably made himself since the frosting was kinda lumpy and also there were bandages on his paws? I guess he burned himself? But he’s grinning real wide, now, and I think, _Snorkmaiden, this is your moment,_ and he says while pointing at the cake, ‘Read it!’ So I read it, and. I just want you to guess what is said, Mymble. Tell me what you think it said.”

   The Mymble’s daughter steepled her hands together, even making an exaggerated _hmm_ sound for flair. “Did it say, ‘Will you marry me Snorkmaiden’?”

   Both Little My and the Snorkmaiden laughed at this, My’s a sharp little sniggering sound of absolute disbelief and Snorkmaiden’s a humorless bark. 

   “His cake,” said the Snorkmaiden, straightfaced, “read, in big, bold letters: ‘ **SURPRISE! I’M GAY.** ’ _That_ ’s what it said, Junior.”

   Little My fell off the couch, absolutely _screaming_ with laughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes the snorkmaiden does purposefully talk Like That (in big uncomfortable walls of text, that is) i love her and she's super rad but for the purposes of this fic i can't focus on her and do that sweet characterization yannow?
> 
>  
> 
> **BONUS:**
> 
>  
> 
> Snufkin looked down at the almost demolished cake in front of him. So many slices had been taken and apparently eaten that it now said " **____RISE! ___ GAY.** " It felt oddly fitting.  
> "I take it she didn't like the cake, then?"  
> Moomintroll looked sadly down at it. "Well. Everybody else sure liked it. She just started crying."


	4. i'm-a gettin' on a mountain, far away from the people on the ground, yeah

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was a man on Snufkin’s tent.  
> Well— that wasn’t entirely true. It might not have been a man. From his vantage point of face-barely-sticking-out-of-the-entrance, uncomfortably on his back, the only thing Snufkin could really be sure of was that something very heavy and possibly person-shaped was laying horizontally across his tent and rumbling like a passing train.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was supposed to be a one-shot.  
> THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A ONE-SHOT. THEN A TWO-SHOT, THEN THREE, THEN FOUR.  
> arghhh. i give up— no gods lie here.

   There was a man on Snufkin’s tent.

   Well— that wasn’t entirely true. It might not have been a man. From his vantage point of face-barely-sticking-out-of-the-entrance, uncomfortably on his back, the only thing Snufkin could really be sure of was that something very heavy and possibly person-shaped was laying horizontally across his tent and rumbling like a passing train.

   Snufkin wasn’t quite _sure_ when the stranger—for he had decided at this point that it was _probably_ a person—had arrived, only that they were heavy and that, from the stench of cheap ganja to the combined unpleasantness of sweat and alcohol intermingling with it, there was a very real chance that Snufkin was either being trapped by another mumrik or some poor schmuck had had a wild night and decided to collapse on top of him in their stupor. 

   There was also an undercurrent of… _something…_ that Snufkin couldn’t place, settling at the back of his throat and tickling his skull. It filled him with a strange urge to cry.

   He couldn’t really stop to think about it, though. His legs were starting to fall asleep. 

   “Oi!”

   He waited a moment. Wiggled a little.

   “Oi, yeah, you! On my tent like you own it!”

   No response. He tried wiggling free again. The figure made a weird kind of snort.

   Snufkin sighed, as deeply as the heavy maybe-a-man laying across his torso would allow. He yearned for his pipe, and his Moomintroll, and thought, _well, I had a pretty good run of it,_ and threw his head back with a haggard noise of defeat.

 

* * *

 

   To say that he didn’t know where he was would be an understatement. The Joxter never _knew_ where he was, so much as he _felt_ it in his heart and in his feet. This was simply the way of a mumrik, and a joxter especially; maps were for the Big Folk, the ones building mansions of wood and stone and glass, and stove-pipes for the little moomin-trolls to nest in. The Joxter here knew that the ocean gleamed just past his vision, and that the Lonely Mountains gnawed at the sky behind him with stone-cut teeth. But the Valley was not a place he’d seen in a long, long time. He could remember as well as he liked that a bright blue Moominhouse sat in its center, for all the good it did that he could not reach it. Landmarks worn smooth by passing paws slipped his mind, and paths cut into the woods by hundreds of little mymble feet hid from his view.

   The Joxter never knew where he was. He was in a place that should have been _home,_ that should have lifted the tired fog from his mind and filled his lungs with fresh air worth breathing. Instead his eyes remained heavy, and his paws still cracked across hard-packed earth. 

   It had just been so, _so heart-_ breakingly _long_ since he had last been anywhere worth remembering so fondly. Maybe he had connected fondness with wellness, in his absence.

   The Mymble had last written him— oh, he didn’t _know_ how long it’d been! Their correspondence had been such an on-and-off thing, what with him constantly moving and then being too cowardly to write back until guilt overcame him and he ashamedly pulled out the stationary burning a hole in his backpack.

   The act—the hiding, the guilt, the _dread_ —was foolish, he knew. His mind and his heart knew that she would not have written him back again and again just to raise his hopes and crush them. The Mymble was kinder than he deserved, was sweetness in his mind and goodness to his heart. Distance had made her something better than she might have been, to him, even as he held in his mind the bitter knowledge that no being could be only sweetness with no spice. 

   But there _was_ sweetness, and the Mymble was not a joxter.

  She was _not a joxter,_ and she _loved him,_ and he too loved her with every fiber of his aching being. She was resplendent and leagues above a dirty tramp as the likes of him.

   Truly, who could he be to another’s eyes, but for the frightened idiot when earnest? The scared child with dirt in his hair and loathing in his heart? He had submitted himself, had bared the wholeness of his soul, had gone through with the horrible ordeal of being known.

   And then he ran. 

  He ran so far that his feet forgot what it was to lazily amble among trusted friends, to walk with anything but dread and a glance over the shoulder. 

   The Joxter was a learned man in the art of running away. For speed, for distance, for the drumbeat of being alive booming in his ears. Head down, claws out, four paws on the ground and tail a rudder. Hat tied on or lost until he stole a new one.

   He could not be sweetness, could only be bitter spice that clogged the nostrils and drew tears from a tender eye.

   Otherwise just the quick-mouthed trickster, the seducer of women and men. One hundred miles ahead and one thousand steps in control. The Joxter, a joxter, _a joxter._ A pretty little kitty to moon over and forget once the adventure was gone and sly mystery dissolved like mist in the sun.

   Hoping, in the early hours of the morning, he’d see a woman he’d abandoned two decades ago. Pathetic.

   The Joxter peeled back his lips, grimacing at himself and at the shifting wood before him. He bared his teeth as if he’d been cornered and fumbled for a match as he packed a smooth-worn pipe with his thumb. A greedy kind of anger sat between the Joxter’s ears, snarled with a voice still smoke-rough and filled his mouth with cotton. He did not see red, but he rubbed his eyes and fireworks danced across his vision.

   The anger passed, born and dead in a flash, and he sagged against a tree. Whatever he’d picked up was skunky, another thing to choke him, but it hit the right spots and soon spun candy floss clouds across the dark storms brewing in his mind. The Joxter had been on his own for a long, long time. When one is alone, they cannot afford to let their pain and their fear distract them. They just breathe in smoke until their lungs turn as black as the evils they hide in their hearts.

   He felt a buzzing in his whiskers, and couldn’t tell rightly if it was a forewarning or a false sense of dread anymore.

   The Valley was approaching, if he hadn’t forgotten his letters and the signs were pointing right. The ganja in his system made his legs heavy, and his mouth felt dry. The Joxter was just so _tired,_ though, of disappointing himself, and his dearest, sweetest, most beautiful Mymble; she blazed now like fire in his mind, warmed the candyfloss thoughts into sticky-sweet caramel. It dripped into his mouth white-hot as he tipped back a canteen of what he’d forgotten was whisky to clear the cotton. He was warm, now, and it was much nicer to be warm with sweetness on the tongue than to think of leaden limbs and broken promises he could’ve mended. 

   The Joxter thought to himself through the sugar of his mind that the ground was having itself some trouble staying still, that even when he righted himself the world hung like a painting askew and did twisting circles before him. It made him think of his time on the _Oshun Oxtra._

   He stumbled further, until a smell tickled his nose and sent a warmth flooding into his chest; even after decades apart, he remembered the scent of _her._ Were he in a whole state of mind, the Joxter may have realized that the scent was off, was mixed with something more husky and earthen than a mymble’s. But the Joxter did not _want_ to think, not as he set paw in a Valley he could’ve settled, so he instead felt a thunderous purr rattle through his ribs, down to his toes and to the tips of his ears as a great love overtook him.

   The Joxter smelled something that was at least half-made of the beautiful Mymble, and with the slow heavy in his limbs it made nothing other than perfect sense than to collapse onto this yellow beacon and immerse himself into the bone-deep content of honey on the tongue.

 

* * *

  
  


   “Oh, Moomintroll!” cried Snufkin, vainly hoping his voice might supernaturally carry over the bridge and into the top room of Moominhouse. He even whistled a few times, because he had read somewhere that whistles could travel further than shouts, although he hadn’t really tested that theory before. He was to the point of grasping at straws and he knew it. “Little My! Sniff? Oh, at this point, I’d even welcome Stinky!” 

   The mysterious figure still hadn’t woken up, was still rumbling away without a care in the world on top of Snufkin’s tent. Even with all of his wriggling, Snufkin had only managed to get his head and his shoulders out of the tent. His arms were still pinned to his sides on the ground. 

   Snufkin had all but resigned himself to his fate when he saw fluffy white feet out of the corner of his eye, and he felt hope flare back up in his chest. “Moomintroll! Oh, Moomee, I’m so glad to see you, I’m in a bit of a situation right now and could really use some help—”

   They were not Moomintroll’s feet.

   “I think you’ve found the wrong troll,” said the Snorkmaiden languidly, “unless you were planning on being an ass from the moment you opened your mouth?”

   Snufkin felt his face get warm, spitting out an instinctive “language,” before he realized that the Snorkmaiden was cursing specifically at him. ”Hey! What’d _I_ do?” 

   “You stole my boyfriend from right under my nose with your— with your fuckin’, fuckin’ mumrik wiles. Who’s the man on your tent?”

   “He— he just showed up a little before dawn, I think? I don’t know, he was just there when I woke up and I can’t shove him off…” And then, in a slightly more panicked tone, “Wait— I did, I did _what,_ with my _what??”_

   “Seduced him, with your stupid ‘beautiful mysterious wiseman’ shtick and your goddamn ‘ _ohh, Moomintroll, I love you, but I’m not gonna say it ‘cause I’m all stoic and mysterious_ ’ bullshit.” She pitched her voice comically low, streaks of green and orange pinwheeling across her arms as she cooed, “‘ _ohh, Moomee, I’ll just break your heart every year ‘cause I’m a goddamn rat bastard and commitment scares me. Oh no, I’ll just play my most personal songs for you and cry under your fuckin’ window when I think no one’s watching._ ’” Snufkin couldn’t quite see above her torso, pinned as he was, but the snarl in her voice was more than apparent on its own. He could feel his face warm, and nearly spat at her when she suddenly continued without him, throwing a “you think I could roll this guy off the tent without breaking either of you?” his way in a different voice than she had been using before.

   Snufkin sputtered for a moment, then said, “if— if you roll him away from my head and support his neck, then probably. The, the hel— the _heck_ you mean I ‘seduced’ him? Thought he was all _straight_ and _in love_ with you.”

   “Straight as a horseshoe, maybe,” she grumbled, shoving with more force than was strictly necessary for when one was dealing with an unconscious body. “Shouldn’t you already know that? I mean, you two’ve been fuckin’ for, what, weeks, now? Like, we all know y’all’re stupid, but y’ain’t stupid enough to be diddlin’ each other, ‘specially for that long, without knowin’ it.”

   “Watch his neck, Snorkmaiden! Me— me and Moomintroll don’t— _know_ each other—like that, _lord._ He wouldn’t cheat on you and I’m not sexual, you know that!” Snufkin started desperately wiggling out of his tent the moment he felt the weight on his torso and legs ease, and his face was flushed a blotchy red. He shakily leaned over and grabbed the Snorkmaiden’s arm as blood rushed back down to his feet and pins and needles stabbed his lower half. “Whether or not I feel for him, or he feels for me, we wouldn’t just— we wouldn’t just go tumbling about like dumb, horny teenagers, Snork! We can’t afford children, Snork!”

   “Well, just saying, _I_ would, if I was really into him,” she huffed.

   “ _I didn’t ask about your sex life, Snorkmaiden!_ ” Screeched Snufkin, voice cracking as his tail puffed and his whole face began to resemble Little My’s dress. 

   “Uuungh,” groaned the not-unconscious-anymore figure, neck only kind of-supported in Snorkmaiden’s paws.

   “HOLY SHIT I THOUGHT HE WAS DEAD,” yelled the Snorkmaiden, violently flinging him into the dirt. 

   “Well he probably _is now!_ ”

   The man lay on the ground, moaning in pain. Not dead, then. Snufkin nudged at him with his foot. “Are you concussed?” 

   Another long, agonized moan. The man spat something low and rolling to no one in particular as he dragged himself out of the dirt, startlingly blue eyes narrowed in pain. He looked from the Snorkmaiden to Snufkin to the Snorkmaiden again. He squinted at her, rubbed his head, scowled, and then turned back to Snufkin. 

   The stranger said, “is this the Moomins’ Valley?” 

   “Only Moominvalley _I_ know of.”

   “Hmm. Mymble still living ‘round here?”

   “Which one?”

   “Mymlan. Uh, Senior. Big brown eyes, ginger hair? Tall as two of me?”

   “Oh, sure. She’s just past that rise, near the, uh, beach? I’m pretty sure they’re still living on that turtle’s back…” Snufkin paused, trailing off before he snapped back to attention. “Her, uh, her warren’s a little crooked, ‘cause Moomintroll built it when he was like, fifteen, but she and her brood should still be there before they’ve set out for winter.”

   The man was still for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll be taking my leave, then.”

 

   And then he left.

 

   The Snorkmaiden looked at Snufkin. Snufkin looked at the Snorkmaiden.

   “That was fuckin’ weird.”

 

* * *

 

      She looked at him, and she saw him; really, truly _saw_ him, the rose-tint of longing laid to the side after years of its comforting warmth.

   She let her eyes drift to the scars on his legs, arms, paws; she glanced at the little nicks and scrapes of living scratched into his skin, and tried not to count the numerous ones that were unfamiliar. She thought, _I should have been there,_ and then, suddenly and tiredly, _something has changed, and I think neither of us knows what it is._

   Though, really, perhaps she was a fool to think that they could have grown without growing at all.

   There was a new roundness to his torso from middle-age, so nearly-domestic in appearance that some unidentifiable feeling flashed through her mind. With a cool detachment she noted the way his once-sleek fur was now ruffled and thinning. A weary tiredness had settled in his eyes, and had crept onto his body. There had always been a lazy air of confidence about him in the past, but now his shoulders hunched forward and his head dipped low as if he could hardly hold it up, much less to meet her gaze.

   The Joxter said with a small voice, “I shouldn’t have left,” and she hummed.

   “You shouldn’t’ve,” she agreed. “But you did.”

   He flinched, and sank into himself. Gently, she stepped forward and laid a hand on his jaw to cup his cheek. “Though I suppose there’s nothing we can do about it at this point.” She rubbed her thumb in little circles on his cheekbone, pausing briefly when he brought up a paw and laid it over top of her hand. 

   “I’m so fucking stupid,” he mumbled. His eyes were glossy and red-rimmed.

   “Perhaps you are, Joxaren,” sighed the Mymble. “But you have come here now, and you look tired. So come inside, and have something to eat, and we can talk later.”

   Mutely, he nodded, and they walked together into the Mymble’s warren of a home.

   He hadn’t let go of her hand.

 

* * *

 

   Moomintroll laid a paw on the doorframe, suddenly anxious as he stood before his father’s writing room. Did he _really_ want to go through with what he had planned? Was he _really_ doing this? 

   Well. 

 

      Of course he was. 

 

          Not like he had much of a choice at this point, anyways.

   With a sigh, Moomintroll rapped his knuckles against the well-worn wood leading into Moominpappa’s study, and walked in. “Um, Pappa? Can I— can I talk to you for a second?”

   Moominpappa paused in his writing, the staccato taps of his typewriter fading into an uncomfortable silence. He looked over his shoulder to see Moomintroll, hunched up as if attempting to hide despite being much too tall for that to work anymore. Pappa quickly stood up, shoving his chair back hard enough that it made a horrendous screech across the floor, and briskly trotted across the room. “Why, of course, son! You know I’m always here for you.”

   Moomintroll continued to mess with the fluffy hairs at his tail-tip. “I just— Pappa— may I, uh, may I sit down?” 

   Pappa nodded, and they sat. “So, my dear boy, what ails you?”

   “I— well, I. There’s something I really need to tell you Pappa, something about me, and maybe about Sn, _uhh,_ _ssss_ omeone else, that I should’ve said by now but I think I was too scared to bring up—”

   Moominpappa sighed deeply, raising a paw to silence his son. He then laid it gently on Moomintroll’s shoulder and smiled a warm smile, the kind of fatherly expression that wrinkled the crow’s feet at his eyes. “It’s all right, Moomintroll. I’ve been expecting this for a while— you don’t need to worry about me and Mamma disowning you, or Snufkin, either; I understand that this will be a rough time for you two, because you aren’t married, but—” Moomintroll squeaked, strangling out a, “Pappa, what— what’re you talking about?” 

   Pappa startled, and blinked. “Are you— so. I take it that I’ve read this wrong.”

   “Yes! I think you have!”

   “So, then, Snufkin’s not pregnant with your illegitimate child—that we would still love, of course!—and we don’t have to arrange a shotgun wedding, or anything like that?”

   Moomintroll squawked, face burning as he shoved at his father. “No! I’m not— Snufkin and I haven’t— haven’t _done_ that, by my tail, Pappa! I came here to say I’m in love with him, not that I’m having kids with him— _oh,_ oh _no.”_  

   “You two weren’t already together?”

   “Oh, oh shit! Shit, fuck, oh _dear!—”_

   “Language, son.”

   “—this is hell!”

   Moominpappa hummed, and then said jovially, “you’re a useless lump of fluff and pine-sap,” while clapping his son on the back. “And don’t you even try to correct me! I’ve seen you try to interact with him, my boy. Truly, to borrow a term from one of my writer friends, you’ve been burning at quite a low temperature for quite some time, Moomintroll. Or did he say it was called a ‘slow-roast’? Hmm. Anyways! Don’t worry one bit, if anyone can bag a nice young man it’s _my_ son, that’s for certain!”

   “I should’ve just gone to Mamma,” moaned Moomintroll.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry if this chapter feels weird. i kinda-sorta-maybe only edited it a little bit.  
>  i'm not making any more promises on how long this thing'll be, at some point in editing i just... kept going. i mean, yay, more content, right?  
>  _woof._

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @formidulosusdraco


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